Rejections.

As Brian and I get ready to move to Portugal in January, a lot of things have kicked into high gear, including my freelance radar. I would really love to be working at least twenty hours a week on freelance editing projects that actually pay me! Imagine that! However, it's hard to balance that desire with the fact I'm still working full time right now (in addition to everything else).

But I'm on a listserv for copyeditors, and one job-op came up that paid one to two thousand per three-week project. That was literally a godsend. So I email the company and they send me a copyediting test. I stress a ton about it. Note to self: relax when it comes to copyediting tests. I know my stuff, and it's not like it's closed book! I would recommend reading over it a couple times, marking everything you know for sure and looking up what you don't. Then give it a couple days where you don't look at it at all! Or think about it! Then you have a fresh mind when you look at it again before you send it back.

So anyway, I feel good about the test, but I also know that if the company is paying that well, there will be some stiff competition. In fact, I pretty much told myself I wasn't getting it.

Weeks go by. No wait, I mean months. I submitted my application mid-June. Today I found out I didn't get it. Sorry folks, no happy ending. Despite telling myself I wasn't getting it, a small part of me still really believed I would. Believed and hoped and every other optimistic word. So yes, it really stunk to read "Unfortunately, we are not able to add you to our list of freelancers at this time."

Rejections happen, though. I'm not sure it's possible to have success without the rejections. After I forwarded my rejection letter to Bri, he sent this message back:

[O]ne of the thought leaders at Bell labs . . . was responsible for inventing a lot of important things (like satellite communications, for one) and was just an all around brilliant and well-respected guy. In addition to all his work at the labs, on the side he liked to write nonfiction articles for magazines like Popular Science and Scientific American, and liked to write science fiction stories. 

I guess he was pretty good at both . . . But they said that in the course of trying to get things published, he did get plenty of rejections. After he died, they realized that he had saved every rejection letter he'd ever gotten---which was literally thousands. 

I thought that was really interesting, because when you see great people, lots of times you only see their great successes and accomplishments, and you think that must be all there is to it. But I don't think that's ever really the case.

 

So I'll eat my humble pie and say thank goodness for supportive spouses, and then I'll try to get through this last horrendous manuscript for one of my non-paying freelance jobs :) Happy weekend.